


The Unnaturals

by numb3r5ev3n



Category: Clive Barker, Lord Of Illusions, Nightbreed, hellraiser
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 01:43:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1450681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/numb3r5ev3n/pseuds/numb3r5ev3n
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the events of Hellraiser: Hellseeker, Kirsty discovers that there are other beings, and other tribes, that thrive in darkness.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Dancer On The Edge Of The Abyss

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS: The whole Hellraiser series up to Hellseeker and Deader, as well as the film Nightbreed. I'm going to try to combine the continuities of the films and the comics as much as I can. The events that transpired in the two-part comic book miniseries Hellraiser vs. Nightbreed - Jihad will play a pretty big role. Also, all the Books of Art and Lord of Illusions. I started this story back in late 2007, and have finally decided how and where I want it to go. Some of it is being cleaned up and rewritten, but most of it is being posted here as-is.
> 
> ALSO: This was going to originally be a crossover with Michael Moorcock's Multiverse continuum as well. It isn't so much anymore, though there is still a huge Moorcock influence that is obvious in some places. This happens in just about everything I write.

(TIME: About 200 years ago)

The Dancer abided in the lowest depths of Hell's Labyrinth, chained and confined within a pit at the very bottom of the deep channel directly beneath Leviathan's axis. He could hear the music somewhere out beyond the Schism; they were calling, calling for _him._

Someone was playing his song.

Well, he was _going_ , and damned if he was going to let new Laws of Hell, or the constraints of a little puzzle box tell him differently. This opportunity was too good to miss - and the poor sorcerer, whoever _they_ were, was about to get way more than they had bargained for. He'd had his fill of Hell's new masters, and their recent and increasingly disturbing shift towards _Order_. And Hell had been especially dull of late without his beloved sister for company.

They'd shackled and bound him, thinking it would keep him where they wanted him – but in truth, he'd just been biding his time, waiting for a moment such as this.

His escape proceeded with a bang, as he exploded upward through through the grate at the mouth of the pit, past his sister's Clowns (who sat nearby, dicing with the knuckle bones of a bygone victim) and the Acolyte who'd been commanded to guard them all for that Cycle. Leering down at the Cenobite, The Dancer took hold of the nearest wall and began to climb, flowing viscously up the flat, grey stone almost faster than the guard's startled black eyes could follow.

" _The Dancer is escaping!"_ The cry rang out, and was nearly drowned in the thrumming drone that was Leviathan's breath. It shook the walls in certain places, making the already-perilous climb that much more difficult. The Dancer relished the challenge. One was supposed to embrace experience, and the lessons that suffering had to impart, yes?

The Cenobites held that he was as outmoded and antiquated as his sister's Clowns. They had suggested - politely and subtly first, but with increasing insistence - that he and all of the other Old-Guarders conform to the new ways, to the stale doctrines of their Order. He spat his contempt out at all of them - the miserable upstarts! So what if decades within the realms of Chaos amongst the humans had endeared him to the randomness and disorder that they so despised? How _dared_ they presume to pass judgement upon him?

He grinned toothily through nearly a dozen orifices as a chains began to strike the wall around him (and parted his substance of his being briefly in order to allow one to strike the wall _through_ him at one point, in mockery of their efforts) criss-crossing the chamber as he leaped from wall to wall, from landing to archway, and back again. He even used the chains to hasten his ascent in some places, speeding up the links as effortlessly as a spider would have maneuvered its web. He was still climbing long after any mere human would have died from the strain, in as much time as an average specimen of that endlessly amusing species would have needed to walk across a room.

Finally, he reached the summit - the uppermost passageway nearest to Leviathan's spin - and pulled himself up and over; allowing the shifting dark matter that composed his body to settle into what was more or less a solid, bipedal form. Whoever was doing the Calling had a skin ready, and he could already feel himself beginning to fill it, to conform to its boundaries. He raised his appendages in a gesture of triumph, and turned his hundreds of eyes up to his father's flawless, diamond face.

Another form, massive in her Hellish splendor, advanced upon him, deftly bringing a huge double-headed ax to bear. The Dancer bowed mockingly as the mightiest and most sadistic of the Cenobites – Merkova, if he remembered correctly – moved to cut him down.

" _You've given us a fine diversion, Dancer,"_ she sneered at him through her bony muzzle, " _But your game is now at an_ end,"

 _"My game is just beginning,"_ the Dancer promised her, before turning back to the entity which had spawned him. " _Goodbye, father,"_ he shouted - and then he was phased over before Leviathan's back beam or Merkova's ax could strike him. Merkova's roar of rage was deafening, but the god's impudent spawn was already gone. He'd blinked out in a flash, leaving only his sigil - an eight-pointed star, its rays arranged like spokes on a wheel - to hang for a moment in the air where he'd been only a second before, as a symbol of his scorn and the sheer stubborn gall of his will.

He was going Topside.

...

(TIME: THE PRESENT. NEW YORK CITY.)

She didn't really like to think about it, but there were times that Kirsty couldn't help but dwell upon the various links in the chain of events that had led her up to her present condition. It had been all too easy at first to block certain things out after the fact, after the police had finally all gone away, and the bodies of her husband, his friend and co-conspirator, and his three sluts had been lowered into the ground.

However, it seemed that there were some things that just refused to stay buried. One second she'd be going throughout her day as if nothing had happened - and it would all come crashing back. She'd find herself ruminating over how she'd gotten to be where she was, and just when she'd gotten accustomed to the Taint of the Box, and of Hell, as it had continued to seep into her soul.

In other words, the moment she'd become a monster...and the moment at which she'd decided that she was okay with that fact.

The thing was, there were times when she really _wasn't_ okay with it, and the sheer level of how much she was _really, really, not okay with it at all_ would hit her at the most inconvenient and inopportune moments. At work. On the train to the bus stop. On the bus on the way home from the train station. At 3:00AM in the morning when she woke up in a cold sweat, and looked into the mirror after staggering in the bathroom, certain that she could not only feel _him_ – Hell's Black Pope, the Leader of the Cenobites - staring back at her from some dark place behind the mirror. Five souls, she'd promised him, and she'd kept her word. The funny thing was, there had been a point after it was all over and done with that she'd suddenly realized that her soul was now _his_ more than ever.

And yet, there were times she remembered the _rage_ she'd felt, watching all of those videos of Trevor and his conquests - and those were the moments when she didn't regret her decision, or her actions, at all. He'd been a lying, cheating, would-be murdering _bastard_ \- and when her anger, and all of her feelings of hurt and betrayal flared back up again, she figured that he and all of his cohorts had deserved what they'd gotten – even if it was death, and an eternity in Hell.

There were days when things were completely normal, nights when she was able to sleep without any of the bad dreams that sometimes plagued her. Yet there were just as many times that she wandered the city in a daze, riding the trains until the night became morning, when she'd completely blank out at her desk at work. Her acquaintances and her co-workers did their best to be understanding, which of course just made everything worse. _Your husband was planning to kill you. And then there's the other four people that he murdered, his friend, those women...horrible, horrible. Of course we understand that you're having a hard time right now, we understand that you're depressed. Why don't you take a few weeks off?_

So that was what she'd done. "A few weeks" had nearly stretched into a month. And here she was, wandering again. The city itself was a Labyrinth, and there were times that she felt that she could not stop moving though it, as if she were compelled to navigate its myriad byways as though they held some answer to her plight - or more likely, as if in preparation for her entry into the Labyrinth she knew awaited her when _he_ came for her again.

There was also the Box, still in her apartment. She'd never been able to get rid of it for any length of time. It always made its way back to her again, without fail. She didn't even like to be in the same room with it. The city, with all of its noise and its pollution and its dangers, seemed less threatening. And the part of Kirsty that housed the dark, cynical humor that she'd developed over the years chucked inwardly at the thought of falling to a random mugger after all that she'd already been through, and the horrors that she knew still awaited her in Hell.

At other times in her life, she'd found that walking through Coney Island, especially at this time of year, always seemed to bring her out of whatever funk she'd managed to get herself into. When she was a child, her father had sometimes skipped out of work early on particularly nice days, and they'd both absconded to one of the Coney Island amusement parks. Somehow she'd made her way there that very evening, as if in subconscious memory of happier, bygone times. The sudden memories of her father were like a blow to the gut. She briefly considered fleeing the place, before a sudden call yanked her out of her reverie;

" _Hey...sister."_

Whirling around to confront the source of the call, her mind took in the various aspects of the people who approached her separately, as if it were incapable of assimilating everything she saw of them at once. She saw what looked like dreadlocks, and a torn poet shirt, on a lean, rangy man who was accompanied by a smaller figure wearing appeared to be a made-over Duke University Blue Devils' football letterjacket, and a rather large man in what looked to be a loud Hawaiian shirt that was open to the waist.

Then her vision snapped into focus, and her heart skipped into her throat.

 _How do the monsters keep finding me?_ This was what crossed her mind as she looked around for the quickest and best route of escape, as Dreadlocks continued,

"Hey, it's okay, I don't think there's anyone else around here right now but us." He looked around quickly to be sure, and then continued,

"I haven't seen you around before." His low, baritone voice seemed to rumble up out of a throat that was more reptilian than human, just like his scaled, rust-red skin. The reptile-man's piercing, bright-blue eyes were the most human-seeming thing about him.

"Don't mind Peloquin. He's like this with every girl he meets. I guess you could say it's his mission in life," said the fat man with...what were those, _fanged_ _eels_ that sprung up out of his belly, to coil lovingly around his neck?

"Fuck off, Leroy," said the Lizard-man...Peloquin?

"Hi there," said the third one, who resembled nothing less than a traditional fanged, horned, stereotypical Demon, standing right there in front of her - but with the simple, guileless eyes of a child. And after her initial shock, Kirsty also remembered that she'd seen Demons - real ones And they'd looked nothing like the creature who stood before her in a T-shirt, torn jeans, sneakers, and the football jacket. It was his eyes that finally caused her curiosity to overcome her terror. No demon, no Cenobite in her experience, had ever possessed such innocence.

"I'm Lude," the Blue Devil continued. "We were gonna go ride the ferris wheel before Peloquin saw you. Wanna come along?"

"Can you give us a goddamn minute, Lude?" Peloquin asked, reminding Kirsty of nothing so much as a guy trying to pick a girl up while trying to fend off an uncool kid brother at the same time.

But Lude, it seemed, was in no mood to wait. He took off running towards the object of his desire, calling out over his shoulder,

" _Last one there is a penis pump!"_

" _Goddammit, Lude!"_ Peloquin shouted after him, snarling. "Wait here," he snapped at Kirsty, before taking off after Lude.

And all Kirsty could do, for several seconds, was gape.

She turned to the remaining member of the strange trio, the large man in the Hawaiian shirt. The snakelike appendages that were currently coiled around his neck like a pair of companionable pythons appeared to originate from a pair of orifices on his abdomen, and Kirsty realized that they were a part of his body.

"Have you been in New York very long?" the man asked. Kirsty remembered that Peloquin had called him Leroy.

"Most of my life," Kirsty responded, with a wary glance. It felt strange to her, to be making small talk with people who didn't even seem to be human; but then she realized that due to her self-imposed exile, it had been weeks since she'd spoken to another being – human or otherwise. And despite their strangeness, none of the trio had made the slightest threatening gesture in her direction. Nevertheless, the question struck her as odd.

"We haven't seen you around before," Leroy explained, with an expression that seemed to mirror her own caution. Kirsty wondered what he felt he possibly could have to fear from her.

"I don't usually come out this far," Kirsty answered, after a moment. "It's getting late," she said. "I should probably get back."

"Fair enough," Leroy said. She was gone by the time Peloquin and Lude got returned from their jaunt on the ferris wheel.

"You didn't even get her fucking _name_?" Peloquin bellowed, when he noticed she was gone.

"She didn't offer it, and I didn't ask," Leroy answered. "We haven't seen her before tonight. We don't know that she's one of us. She could be _natural._ "

"No _way_ she's a fucking natural." Peloquin retorted. "I can smell innocence at fifty yards, and _she's_ got blood on her hands."

...

The next morning, Kirsty slid easily back into the same routine that she'd slipped into ever since she'd stopped going in to work. After a night of fitful sleep, she turned on the TV and sat at the table, sipping coffee or indulging in the occasional cigarette as the morning news turned into the mid-morning talk shows, which in turn would inevitably blend into afternoon soaps and another round of the news. Early on, she had discovered that endless drone of the TV, the pasted-on smiles and banal episodic troubles of the personalities on the screen were preferable to the uncomfortable destinations that her own thoughts would invariably lead her.

The whole time, the Box's presence in her apartment would be digging at her awareness like a splinter, no matter how much she tried to ignore it (it was currently squirrelled away in a shoe box on the top shelf of her closet.) She'd tried lighting it on fire, running over it with a car, and various other forms of destruction, and nothing had worked. There were times that Kirsty felt _Him_ watching, and she was certain that her efforts were an endless source of amusement to him. After a while, she gave up.

There was no one around that she cared to give it to; no one who outwardly seemed to deserve Hell enough for her to make the attempt to foist it off on them.

It depended on how long she could stand it from day to day, but she'd generally ended up leaving about the time that the Afternoon News gave way to syndicated re-runs of the Buddy Vance Show. However, today was different; Kirsty found that she simply could not put the events of the previous evening, or the people she'd met, out of her mind.

 _They were freaks,_ she thought. But what struck Kirsty later when she'd had a chance to go back over the situation in her mind was the fact they'd taken her for one of their own - at least, they had at first.

The concept frightened her at first; was her corruption so obvious, then?

But as she continued to reflect upon events, she remembered that aside from their looks, they'd sounded almost _normal_. Peloquin had put her on her guard at first, but he hadn't really done anything to threaten her. Lude's childlike enthusiasm had seemed anything but dangerous. And Leroy had been more than willing to let her walk away into the night without accosting her.

In short, they had behaved nothing at all like Cenobites. And they'd been willing to talk to her, without asking her needless questions or making a pretense of pestering her about her well-being because they wanted to hear more about her dead husband, his dead friend, and his decaying mistresses, like most of her acquaintances had done...

It was then that Kirsty realized that it had almost literally been months since she'd actually spoken with _anyone_. Never in her entire life had she been so alone.

 _What if they just look different?_ Kirsty wondered. _What if they're normal on the inside?_ This was actually a cause of worry for her, since all the "normal" people in her life had done was to try and milk her for more of the details surrounding her husband's death.

But what if she approached them again, and they accepted her - no questions asked?

Faced with another day of guarding the Box, and waiting for something to happen with it – for this was what she realized she'd been doing all this time – she got up and walked out into the afternoon air for another round of wandering. A sense of renewed purpose hurried her steps.

 

* * *

 


	2. The Hell You Know

Kirsty didn't find them that afternoon, or that evening, or even the next day. But she found leads. Clues, enough in some situations to make her wonder if she hadn't missed them by mere minutes.

Kirsty didn't know yet that she was walking a well-trodden path, worn by the footsteps of the many lost souls who had sought sanctuary with the Nightbreed before her. Less than two decades before, that path would have eventually led her to a little burnt-out ghost town in Canada; East of Peace River, near the town of Shere Neck, North of Dwyer, to a place called Midian. That place no longer existed. But in the intervening years since its fall, the former denizens of Midian had made themselves another refuge in the very city in which she now lived.

She went back to Coney Island that night, and many nights afterwards, hoping to find them. She ventured into many places that were dangerous for a woman to tread after dark, with a stiletto and a can of pepper spray as her only weapons. She tried not to think too hard about the knife. It appeared some things did run in the family, after all. It was completely anodized a light-eating black, and as unlike the _other one_ that she remembered as possible. Other than this, its only embellishment was the phrase " **MADE IN CHINA** ," which was stamped down the length of the blade in blood-red lettering. The man at the gun and knife store had tried to sell her a horn-handled knife instead, like the one Uncle Frank had owned. The glacial look she gave him by way of reply had made his blood run cold.

Even with these investments, she'd already had a few close calls - the worst of which had culminated in a midnight chase in which she lost her would-be assailant by ducking into an alleyway and climbing into a large garbage bin. She'd remained there until morning, her knife clutched in a white-knuckled hand, when she was surprised by a city sanitation worker. She'd nearly slashed him when he'd lifted the lid. He'd fled, and Kirsty had taken that opportunity to escape.

On her evening walks, she'd already seen a side of the city that didn't show itself during the day. Now, as she beheld the different parts of the city that she went over in the course of her search, she realized that there was still more that she still didn't know, that she'd never even guessed at. Thinking back upon the creatures she'd met that night on Coney Island, Kirsty marveled that in all the twenty years since she'd first matched wits with Hell, she'd never stopped to consider what _else_ might be out there in a world that she already knew could allow for the presence of the Box and the Cenobites.

At first, she thought that her mind was playing tricks on her. But as the nights passed, she came to the conclusion that her experiences with the Box had taught her how to look _through_ and _behind_ the facade that most people accepted and embraced as their day-to-day reality. Each brush she'd had with Hell had served to sensitize her to things that most people skimmed right over, indoctrinated as they were by the consensus of society that such things were impossible – or wildly improbable, at the very least. Her own wary nature encouraged her to take note of everything, from the bum on the corner, to the shadows in the windows above. She was also learning to discern sounds and scents in the air, to pick them out from the more mundane noise and reek of the City, to pick certain key words out of conversations she heard on the street for information that could perhaps be used to help her towards her destination.

First, she began to take notice of her fellow misfits of society, the homeless and disadvantaged who inhabited the streets that she nightly prowled. As the days became a week, she came to recognize faces on specific corners and in certain alleyways. She even learned a few names here and there, though there were not a lot of words exchanged. Early on, Kirsty felt instinctively she wouldn't find her Monsters at all during the day, and that to mention them to the wrong people might have disastrous consequences for all concerned. For their part, the street dwellers who took notice of her soon deduced that she was searching for something - and that whatever it was, it was hers alone to find.

After about a week and a half, she started to become aware of the existence of the "Poncho People," as she thought of them. It was as if someone had taken an entire contingent of street people and outfitted them all with the type of cheap, yellow-green plastic rain slickers that she'd seen in the bargain isles in some of the drugstores around the city. She saw them every now and then, flitting across streets, onto catwalks, and off fire escapes, always darting just out of sight. No one else seemed to notice them.

Then there was the night she stumbled onto something that she took to be some sort of "fight club," in a small lot between warehouses. A pair of men leaped and spun to the rhythm of a loud rap song on a nearby radio, missing each other by inches as they sparred. Kirsty watched from the cover of a nearby alley, unable to tell if they were fighting, or just dancing. She could barely see them for their compatriots, who encircled them in a tight ring, clapping and stamping in time to the music. She managed to sneak away before she was seen - or so she thought.

Then one night, she hit pay dirt.

Kirsty was making her way down an alley when she was addressed by a man she'd passed at the entrance, and who she'd long ago marked as harmless – a beggar whom she'd noticed about the third night, and with who by now almost a nodding acquaintance. His name was Lonny. Like so many of New York's homeless, he'd been turned out of an asylum three years previously when his benefits had dried up.

"Hey...are you Kirsty? Is that your name?" he said from behind her, making her jump. She whirled around, her hand on the knife in the pocket of her jacket. Lonny took a step back, his hands spread out in the air where she could see them.

"Are you looking for the Nightbreed, Kirsty?" he asked her, point-blank.

"Is that what they're called?" she asked him.

"There used to be a place, up in Canada," he told her. "I heard about it when they put me in that hospital. People used to talk about Midian. That's where they used to come from."

"Then what happened to it?" Kirsty questioned, trying to reign in her impatience, unable to see what this had to do with her Monsters -

"It came _here_. About fifteen years ago," Lonny said. "They're all over the place if you know where to look. That's what you've been doing, right? Looking for them? Do you want them to take you?" he asked. "They do that with people sometimes. You have to be worthy. They wouldn't _take_ me," he almost sobbed. "They talk to me sometimes, but they won't take me!"

"What do you have to do to be worthy?"

"Do you think I _know_? If I _knew_ , I'd be _with_ them!" Lonny exclaimed.

"I could talk to them," Kirsty told him, Kirsty asked, taking a step closer despite the stench of alcohol on his breath and his unwashed body. "I could tell them about you -"

"You'd do that?" he said, his eyes shining. "You know, they keep a lot of the _real_ monsters off the streets. When those G-Men come around, we don't tell them anything. We all pretend to be crazy. You could tell them that. We cover for them all the damn time!"

 _G-Men?_ Kirsty wondered.

"I'll tell them," Kirsty said. "Do you know where they are? Do you know where I could find them?"

"I'll tell _you_. Fuck those brownshirts," Lonny told her. "Peloquin and Narcisse go down to Chaos sometimes," Lonny said. Kirsty's ears pricked up when she heard the name _'Peloquin.'_ She was convinced. This was not just some crazy, raving hobo who was roping her into his personal mythology. This was _real_. Her first real lead since she'd started looking.

"Choas in the East Village," Lonny continued. "It's Jagged's place. He's a friend of theirs, but he's got his own thing going." He leaned closer, conspiratorially. "I think they're all working together to take down the Empire." he said hopefully.

"Thank you Lonny," Kirsty said. "I'll tell the Nightbreed everything. I hope they decide take you." She meant it.

...

It was two hours later, and there she was - doing her best to summon the courage to actually go inside. Tracking down the Nightbreed had become an obsession - but now that she was this close, it had suddenly dawned on her that she really hadn't thought about what she would do when she'd actually found them.

 _You can still turn around,_ she thought to herself. _You can go back._ Back to her apartment, with either the television or the radio running at all hours so she wouldn't have to deal with her own despair. Back to the same routine. Back to her job, when her savings ran out - and to co-workers who would whisper about her behind their backs, when they weren't haranguing her directly with their prying questions.

Kirsty took a deep breath and looked back over the bar. It was in a large, three-story-tall converted warehouse, one that was certainly large enough to contain more that just the one nightclub.

 A flicker of movement one one of the fire escapes caught her eye. She glanced up to see what she thought at first was perhaps a bit of loose tarp stuck to the railing, caught up in a gust of wind with a sound like the flapping of birds' wings. The wind died as abruptly as it had surged up, and the greenish plastic settled around its occupant. Kirsty blinked in surprise, as she realized that it was one of the "Poncho People" that she'd caught glimpses of during her nightly forays.

She couldn't make out any features within the plastic hood; but whoever it was, she was certain that they were looking right at her. She returned the stare, hoping for some clue to the cowled stranger's identity even as she felt in her jacket pocket for the knife.

Who _were_ these people that she'd briefly seen as they were ghosting through the night?

Her gaze was broken by the sound of someone loudly clearing his throat. Peloquin was standing there, in a pool of shadow cast by the overhanging bar sign. Kirsty knew she would not have even seen him if he hadn't made some kind of noise. _He's probably been there all along_ , she realized.

"Heard someone was looking for the Nightbreed," Peloquin said.

"Maybe," Kirsty responded, gratified that her voice sounded a hell of a lot braver than she actually felt.

"You got a knife there?" he asked, with a nod towards Kirsty's pocket. She realized that her fingers were still curled around **Made In China** 's handle.

"Maybe," she answered again. Peloquin grinned.

"Good idea. There are a lot of fucking assholes in this town," he told her. "You like booze?"

"Yeah,"

"Well, let's see if they've got any," Peloquin said with a sly grin, reaching for the door and beckoning for her to follow him inside.

Kirsty's attention was grabbed once again by the sound of flapping plastic. Her eyes darted back up at towards the fire escape. The poncho-clad figure was gone.

...

Kirsty followed Peloquin through the door. He led her immediately up a flight of stairs to the right of the entrance.

"We get to Chaos through the second floor," he explained, glancing back down at Kirsty over his shoulder as they ascended the stairs. "Jagged – the guy who owns it – lets us have the run of the place as long as there's no trouble."

 _I'm in,_ Kirsty thought, with a rush of exhilaration. She'd hoped just to talk to them, to find out exactly _who_ and _what_ she had met that night on Coney Island. But now that she was here, it felt almost as if she were infiltrating them. It was odd, but as she made her way up the stairs behind Peloquin, Kirsty realized that she had absolutely no fear of him - at least, no more than she normally would have had in a similar situation if he'd looked _normal_. If he was a monster, at least he wore his abnormalities on the outside of his skin where she could easily see them. And if his monstrosity only turned out to be skin-deep, then it just proved the old maxim that looks could be deceiving.

Besides, he had his back to her. She had a knife - and therefore, the advantage...

"You're being awfully quiet," Peloquin remarked, looking back over his shoulder at her again. "What are you so nervous about? You may not be Breed... _yet._ But I wouldn't bringing you here if I didn't _know_ from the moment we met that you don't belong to the daylight any more than I do."

 _Then it's true_ , Kirsty thought. Her experiences had exiled her from the realm of ordinary human fellowship, into whatever parallel society these beings inhabited. She was no longer a part of the Natural world.

_If I'd left it years ago...stopped trying to live a lie...maybe Trevor and the rest of them might still be alive._

The trouble was, she'd _wanted_ that life, wanted a normal human existence with the love of a normal spouse and a normal job, in their normal apartment in Manhattan. It had taken the shock of Trevor's betrayal to show her the utter futility of this, to make her realize that she'd just been prolonging the inevitable.

" _It's you who wants me here,"_ The Cenobite had told her. _Goddamn it, he was right. He was right,_ Kirsty railed inwardly, fighting tears as she walked in the dark behind Peloquin. All the time she'd been trying to build the "normal" life that she'd so coveted, a part of her that she had been trying to pretend wasn't there had been counting the moments until she surrendered entirely to the Box - and to the being who had been a part of her destiny since that fateful night in the hospital all those years ago. Until her chance encounter with the Nightbreed, she hadn't known that there were any alternatives to what in the deepest, darkest part of her psyche, she'd always assumed would be her ultimate fate.

"Until the other night, I thought I was alone," she said finally. What else could she tell him? That everyone she'd known had either betrayed her, was dead, or both? That a part of her had belonged to Hell for the better part of twenty years, and that every attempt to escape her fate had brought her even further into its - into _his_ \- jealous grip?

"You should've come out ages ago," he told her. "It's a whole different world after the sun goes down. It's right there in front of people's faces, and most of them still have no fucking clue about it. They don't _want_ to have a clue." He shrugged. "Suits me just fine."

"Some people have a clue," Kirsty said. "I met this guy on the street who told me about this place. He said his name was Lonny."

"Oh yeah," Peloquin said. "There are always going to be a few Naturals out there who are sharper than the rest, who have a nose for the _un_ natural," he explained. "Lonny's always been too perceptive for his own good. I think that's why they put him away in the first place," Peloquin said.

"He said he saw some G-Men asking around about you guys," Kirsty added.

"He says he sees a lot of things," Peloquin replied. "Not all of them are actually there."

They had reached the second floor and were now progressing through a hallway. Kirsty could feel a rhythmic pounding under her feet as they approached the door ahead.

Peloquin reached a door first, and opened it for Kirsty. She stepped through...and found herself blinking as she emerged into a column of pulsing pink light. The force of the music - heavy electronica with a gothic edge - washed over her like a breaking wave. The actual lighting of the club was quite dim, but flashing LEDs and strobe lights from the dance floor shattered the darkness at regular intervals, adding to her sense of disorientation.

"I should've warned you...stepping into this place can be like walking into a bad acid trip at times," Peloquin said as he pushed past her and into the catwalk that connected the entrance to the main dance floor.

As her eyes adjusted, Kirsty realized that the walls seemed to be mirrored, giving the place a sense of being much larger than it actually was. The dance floor was in the center of the club, ringed by a series of raised landings on all sides, with a bar against the wall on their side. The floor was packed with dancers, some of whom were twirling chemical glowsticks as they danced. Combined with the lightshow already in progress, the effect was almost psychotropic. Kirsty wondered if there were seizure warnings posted anywhere in the club.

"Jagged once told me about this crackpot scientist guy in California, over on the Mexican side," Peloquin said, learning down and half-shouting so she could hear him. "He said he tried to make this elixir that could _evolve_ people. Jag says he wants to try the same thing, but with lights and EDM." He shrugged. "It's all bullshit if you ask me - but nobody bothers us here, and it's a place to get drunk."

Kirsty just nodded, her attention suddenly drawn to the woman who was approaching them. As she drew closer, Kirsty noticed that she was wearing the exact same type of yellowish-green plastic poncho as the person out on the fire escape had been over her street clothes, though hers was cut down to what looked like someone's approximation of a fairy tunic. The cowl of the poncho was thrown back, revealing the brilliant fire-engine red-streak dyed into the bangs of her otherwise closely-cropped blond hair. Her ears were ringed with piercings, and her hands were folded in front of her in a way that almost suggested prayer. What Kirsty could see of her thin arms were covered in black, tribal-looking tattoos. To Kirsty, she resembled nothing so much as a kind of punk urban druid.

"Peloquin!" The woman greeted, before turning to Kirsty. Her eyes widened for a moment in what _almost_ looked like shock, or recognition.

"Mary, is Jagged around?" Peloquin asked the woman. "Hey, this is -" he stopped short, one scaled red brow raised as he glanced over at Kirsty, as she remembered that she had never given him her name.

"Kirsty," she said, wondering if she shouldn't have come up with some sort of pseudonym instead.

"Kirsty, this is Mary Red," Peloquin said.

"We're pleased that you've finally made it here," Mary said. "We've seen you a great deal over these past few weeks. Have you finally found what you were looking for?"

"Who is _we_?" Kirsty asked. Was this woman one of the Nightbreed? Mary responded with a cryptic smile.

"Those of us who have decided to walk apart from the _mainstream_ ," she answered. Kirsty realized suddenly that the woman hadn't blinked once since the conversation had begun. _Maybe she's just stoned_ , Kirsty reasoned.

"This place is a haven," Mary said, "an eye in the storm of banality that most people use to shield themselves from the truth."

"And what truth would that be?"

"That none of this is _real_ ," Mary answered, as if it should have been obvious all along.

"Then what _is_ real?" Kirsty asked.

" _Nothing is real. Everything is permitted_ ," Mary Red answered. Kirsty had the feeling that she was quoting something, but it was nothing that she'd ever heard or read before.

"Yeah...and if you wanna get to Zion, you have to take the Red Pill," Peloquin quipped, rolling his eyes. "The actual saying is, ' _Nothing is true. Everything is permitted_ ,'" he corrected. "I'm not exactly what you'd call a bookworm, but I do know from motherfucking William S. Burroughs."

"It's also the motto of Chaos, and those who follow Chaos. And it all amounts to the same thing in the end," Mary said, with another glance at Kirsty. "We'll speak again, soon, yes?" She drifted off.

"Okay then," Kirsty said bemusedly, after she was gone. _What the hell was that all about?_

"You handled that pretty well," Peloquin said. "She's not supposed to proselytize in here, but she does it anyway. I'm going to hit the bar. Do you want anything?"

"No thanks...not right now. Do you mind if I look around?"

"Go ahead. I'll be right here if you change your mind."

Kirsty didn't see anyone else who looked like they might be one of the Nightbreed as she explored, nor could she see that any other representatives of the Poncho Platoon were present. Everyone else in the club appeared to be the exactly the type of folks that she would have expected to find in any club of its type in New York City. Still, there seemed to be a kind of synchronization to the churning throng, with an undertow that Kirsty felt she couldn't quite define – almost a sense of frenetic, breathless _anticipation_ , fueled by adrenaline and whatever other chemicals the club's patrons had resorted to in this neon-lit Nirvana.

On another one of the landings was what appeared to be a small arcade. As she went over for a closer look, Kirsty saw something else that caught her interest; set slightly set away from the various gaming cabinets was a _Dance Dance Revolution_ console, of the type she'd seen in various arcades around the city. It was currently in use by a dark-haired, whipcord-slender man in jeans, a t-shirt, and a black leather blazer. He seemed utterly absorbed in the game as he negotiated a swiftly-moving current of arrows and mines in a complicated, almost hypnotic pattern, flowing with a zenlike rhythm. His movements almost appeared to blur – or was it just an effect of the strobe lights above them? She wondered how he could hear the music from the game at all over the dance music in the club, if he was just following the visual cues on the screen, or if he'd just done it so many times that he'd committed it to memory.

She stood and watched as he cleared the level he'd been working on – and then, without warning, he suddenly turned to face her. Kirsty flinched as she realized that she'd been caught staring. The man smiled disarmingly, his startlingly pale blue eyes full of good-natured amusement behind the lenses of his wire-framed glasses.

"Are you waiting for a turn?" he asked her, gesturing to the second arrow platform beside him. His accent sounded British to Kirsty. A Londoner.

"No thanks. I was just watching," she told him, wracking her brain for an adequate excuse for her scrutiny. "I've never really played this before -"

"We can go through something simple first, if you're new at this," he persisted. There was something magnetic about his eyes and his smile that almost put her off of her natural caution. He was certainly attractive - though he definitely registered as more than a _blip_ on her gaydar, which had never led her wrong before.

 _It's just a game,_ she thought finally, stepping on to the platform beside his. _What harm could there be in it?_

Kirsty admittedly hadn't spent much of her spare time studying _DDR_ machines. But looking down, she noticed that the arrow platforms actually had _eight_ arrows per player instead of four, pointing outward from each other on a central axis. Before she could comment on this, however, he began to guide her through Franz Ferdinand's _Take Me Out._ His sexual ambiguity aside,she wondered at first if there was supposed to be any innuendo to this. Even after all she'd been through, the thought almost brought a flush of color to her cheeks; but after a moment Kirsty had no time to think of anything else but the game.

She soon discovered that it was easier to focus on the music on the machine rather than the loud, pounding techno coming from the dance floor than she thought it would be. And despite herself, Kirsty was actually _having fun_. She wasn't thinking of the Box, or Trevor, or even the Cenobites for the first time in weeks. A weight seemed to lift from her soul as she lost herself in the game, and in the light-hearted company of the man on the platform beside hers.

They had conquered _Take Me Out_ and were just wrapping up the Gorillaz song _Feel Good Inc._ when Peloquin finally found them.

"What the fuck, Jag," Peloquin shouted from behind them, making Kirsty jump. "She hasn't even been here an hour, and you're already trying to show her some moves."

"Jealous?" The man asked with a backward glance, as his charming smile split into a manic leer that caused Kirsty to take an involuntary step back. He sprang, clearing the ten feet or so between himself and Peloquin and slamming into him. Peloquin stood his ground, grinning like a fiend. The soles of the man's boots skidded harmlessly on the floor as he vainly shoved the large Nightbreed, seemingly pushing with all his might. Kirsty cracked the ghost of a smile - the completely frivolous nature of this "attack" was patently obvious.

After a moment, Peloquin grabbed the man around the waist and picked him bodily up off the ground. Not to be outdone, the man squirmed out of Peloquin's grasp and swung around to his back where he clung, regarding Kirsty over Peloquin's shoulder with eyes that were full of warm mischief.

"Are you going to introduce me to your friend, Peloquin?" the man asked. In response, Peloquin suddenly dipped backwards. The man released him, landed easily on his palms and feet, and snapped back up into a standing position. He adjusted his glasses and raked a hand through his longish hair, suddenly the very image of propriety.

"I'm Kirsty," she said, stepping forward and offering her hand after a second of awkward deliberation.

"Nice to meet you, Kirsty," the man said. He took her hand -

_Blackness. Then an eight-tiered flash of searing light, and the sudden surge of swift acceleration -_

"I'm Jagged," the man said, shaking her hand as if they'd met only seconds before. "Welcome to Chaos."

Kirsty's response died in her throat, as she was unable to recall why her heart had inexplicably leaped in her chest. She felt strangely reassured and overwhelmed at the same time. It was his eyes, she decided. Either that, or the strobes were finally getting to her.

"I think I'll have that drink now," she said to Peloquin.

"Sounds good to me," he responded.

"Thanks for the game," she said to Jagged. And she meant it, though her head still swam.

"You're most welcome," he said cordially. "I'll still be around, if you'd like to play again."

Kirsty could still feel his eyes on her as she and Peloquin headed towards the bar.

 ...

"You do know who she is, don't you?" Mary Red asked Jagged after Kirsty and Peloquin were well out of earshot. "Do you think she still has it?"

"I know who she is," Jagged confirmed. "And I forbid you to bother her about it while she's here." His voice was even and reasonable, but there was a _power_ behind it. Even so, it appeared she was still willing to defy him

"She walked right into our midst!" Mary protested angrily. "How can we pass this up? If she has it, it's her duty to give it up, her destiny to help us - "

"She's a refugee here, same as the rest of us," Jagged said softly. "She came under my protection the moment she crossed over the threshold into my domain. If she comes to you about it of her own free will, then I won't stop you. But just how far are you willing to pursue this? Wasn't it bad enough, losing Winter?"

"We can get him back!" Mary protested. "I would think that _you_ of all people would want him back the most!"

Jagged heaved a huge sigh. He looked as though he suddenly felt very tired.

"I'm done with this conversation," he said unhappily. "Just leave Kirsty alone, all right?" He turned and stalked off onto the dance floor, where he was soon lost in the crowd.


	3. Chaos

The bartender on duty was a tall, muscular blond man with a neatly-trimmed beard, whom Kirsty was fairly certain had probably been in the service at some point. He identified himself as Bruce as he poured her rum and coke. He looked perfectly normal, as did most of the other patrons, and Kirsty couldn't help but wonder what he made of Peloquin – or of Mary, for that matter.

"There are places in the city where we can go, and nobody notices." Peloquin said when she asked him about it. "This place is one. Central Park is another – so is Coney Island. We either blend into the scenery, or people don't remember us clearly," he explained. "Most Naturals can't deal with it. Give them enough of a reason to explain away the strange and unusual, and they'll do it in a heartbeat." He followed this with a long swig of his own drink, as Kirsty mulled his words over.

"So the fact that I can see you means I'm not human?"

"Not necessarily," Peloquin said, shaking the ice that had collected at the bottom of his glass and taking last sip, before setting his glass on the bar. He eyes narrowed for a second, and Kirsty had the impression that she was being _weighed_ somehow _._ "So my question is, what are _you_ going to do, now that you know?"

"I don't know," Kirsty admitted. "I didn't really plan that far." Peloquin nodded.

"The Naturals aren't very forgiving of our kind," he said – and once again, Kirsty had a feeling that Peloquin was including her in _'our kind'_ – even though he'd said earlier that she _'wasn't breed.'_ "I hope you'll forgive me for asking, but I'm wondering what it was that set you off."

"What do you mean?" Kirsty asked.

"You don't have to be coy with me," Peloquin said, with a grin that looked predatory. "Look, I know you've shed blood. I had you pegged from the moment I first saw you." He leaned in closer. "Did someone push you over the edge? Or did you just get tired of being one of the sheep?"

Kirsty's jaw worked soundlessly for a moment, her mind awash in a flood of sudden panic. _Does he know about Trevor and the others? How could he know?_

"Or maybe the flock turned on you," Peloquin suggested. "Happens that way, sometimes – you're just born a little _different,_ and it seems like everyone else is in on the joke but you - until they're tying you to a stake and lighting you on fire. Is that what happened?"

"I have to go," Kirsty blurted, setting her glass down on the bar and backing away.

"Okay," Peloquin said, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. "You don't have to tell me - "

"I have to go _now,_ " Kirsty demanded, looking around for the door. Seeing it, she made her escape.

Peloquin made no attempt to stop her. Instead, he picked his glass back up and inspected it for any remaining trace of liquor. Finding, none, he sighed miserably as he returned it to the bar.

"That was fucking brilliant," Jagged's voice sounded from behind him. "I'll have to remember that as a pick up-line; 'Say, have we met? Do you come here often? Really? Kill anyone lately?"

"Fuck off, Jag," Peloquin retorted bitterly.

"It's shaping up to be one of those nights," Jagged commiserated. "Don't worry – I'm quite sure that we'll be seeing her again very soon," he said. He flashed Peloquin his Cheshire-Cat smile before fading back into the crowd.

"No shit," Peloquin shot back at his retreating form. He ordered another drink.

....

Kirsty was followed home that night, and not by Peloquin. The shape that followed her through the darkness back to her apartment negotiated the rooftops as easily as her feet were treading the pavement below him. He was not seen.

Chaos's staff operated like a well-oiled machine; an irony perhaps, considering the club's namesake. He knew they would be able to handle things while he was away. They'd had to before, on many occasions. He knew that what he was doing flew in the face of the very advice he'd given to Mary little more than half an hour before. However, Kirsty's presence in his nightclub, and her reaction to Peloquin's botched seduction attempt had roused his interest.

He'd known who she was before she'd even set foot in his domain. His contact among the Harrowers had told him of a woman who'd nearly stumbled upon the _Roda_ that he'd attended almost a week before. She'd been followed then, too – and it had only been a matter of a few nights' shadowing to find out who she was, and what she was looking for.

The name Kirsty Cotton - though it was Kirsty _Gooden_ now, apparently – was already legend in some circles, though he wondered whether Kirsty herself would be pleased or disturbed by that fact if she were to find out about it. Escaping the dark appetites of the Cenobites once was no small feat by any means. To do it more than once would have gained her instant admittance into the ranks of the Harrowers in a heartbeat.

But after the events that had transpired at the Channard Institute, she'd quietly faded from view; seemingly content to pursue a normal life. No one he knew would have begrudged her this. So what had happened to bring her out into the night with a knife in her pocket and a grim, haunted look in her eyes that seemed to give the more mundane city-dwellers cause to instinctively avoid her as she slipped through the darkened alleyways and streets?

He felt he knew who might have the answer to that question.

 _I guess the apple didn't fall very far from the tree, did it?_ he mused thoughtfully, as he watched her enter her apartment building from the adjacent rooftop where he'd stopped.

As he prepared to leave his perch, he noticed another figure on the ground, half-concealed in the shadows, who slipped away as soon as she was inside.

 _This game just keeps getting interesting,_ he thought as he sped away with a backward glance.

....

The hours following Kirsty's encounter at Chaos were some of the worst she'd suffered in the weeks since Trevor's death at her own hands. She'd spent most of that night slumped at the table in an almost catatonic haze; by the time the sun had touched the windows of her small apartment, she was sobbing openly.

 _He'd known._ It had been like running into another version, another incarnation, of _him._ Just another deep-voiced, well-spoken fiend - though this one had at least made a token attempt at polite conversation and seduction before proceeding to try and rip out her soul.

...Or had he? Peloquin had leered knowingly as he'd made inferences to her crimes; but he hadn't seemed to know what they were exactly. Just that she'd _killed_. He seemed to think that this was what had caused her to look for the Nightbreed - that her actions had set her apart from the human flock, and made her a candidate for acceptance into his.

And what of Jagged? His interaction with her had seemed completely innocent, even harmless by comparison. _Normal._ For a little while there, it has almost seemed as though was attempting to flirt with her, as well; and she'd caught herself almost hoping that he actually had been. Had he been operating under the same sort of sixth sense regarding her activities as Peloquin had? Did he _know_?

Mary Red had been weird, and maybe a little flaky; but she hadn't done anything that even seemed remotely threatening. But then, she'd talked about seeing Kirsty as she'd roamed all over town. Had Mary been spying on her? How much did these people already know?

If Peloquin hadn't started interrogating her, it would have all seemed so _perfect_. Her escape from the Limbo she'd been in, and a chance at a new start. Maybe there still _was_ a chance...

 _I just don't know_ , Kirsty thought, burying her face in her hands.

It was at times like this that the call of the Box was almost too strong to bear.

She went into her bedroom and _glared_ at it, as she sometimes did - Trevor's "anniversary gift" in its shoe box on the top shelf in her closet. As if she could stare it down. As if to say: _don't even fucking try it. I beat you before. I'm not ever going to solve you again, so don't even think about it. I'll throw you in the fucking East River again. I know you'll be back, but it'll feel good to do it. Do you want to go back in the fucking river? I thought so. Go to Hell._

Maybe that would have even worked before she'd killed Trevor and the others. Now, it just seemed laughably foolish, and futile to boot.

All throughout the next day, she sat, staring through the open door to her bedroom from her refuge at the kitchen table. The call did not abate at all through the long hours; if anything it grew more and more insistent. She clutched the edge of the table with white-knuckled hands, as if it were the only thing holding her in place, keeping her from rising, and going to it, and to _him._

Finally she felt herself rise, as the sun began to sink beyond the western horizon. She watched herself move into the bedroom, and retrieve the shoe box from the top shelf of the closet. Numbly, she carried it back to her seat at the table. She lifted the lid, and reached a hand into the box. Her fingertips caressed the golden filigree, the grain of the lacquered wooden surface.

_Yes..._

" Fuck this," she exclaimed, slamming the cardboard top back down on the box. _The river it is._

By this time, Kirsty was familiar enough with the city's back-alleys and byways that she was able to reach the river in half the time that it had taken the last time she'd tried to get rid of the box in such a fashion. It had shown back up in less than an hour, shuffled back into her coat pocket by a random passer-by on the street. She really didn't expect this time to be any different, though even a few minutes with it out of her apartment would be a blessed relief.

She sometimes wondered what would happen if she'd just up and left with it still in the closet; if she were to just pack whatever clothes and keepsakes she could carry in one satchel, and hop on a bus or a plane to anywhere else in the world. That option seemed more attractive than ever, now.

_But I said I was done running. Why should I be the one to leave? I kept my end of the bargain. I gave him Trevor and the others. If I run now, all of that will have been for nothing._

Guilt wracked her conscience; she tried to will it away. _He was a bastard. All he ever cared about was the money, and how many skirts he could get into in the meantime. He and Bret - and those women. They all knew he was married. Gwen and I even talked at his office parties. Tawny and I saw each other ever day in the hall. Sage knew who I was the moment I stepped into her office. They all knew. They all knew what they were doing, knew who I was, and they did it anyway..._

A noise from the shadows broke her litany of rage. She reached into her pocket with her right hand for **MADE IN CHINA** 's handle, while holding the shoebox in the crook of her left arm as a blue, horned shape stepped out from a darkened space between two buildings.

It was Lude.

"Oh hey, it's you," he said conversationally. "What's up? Heard your date with Peloquin didn't go too well."

" _Date_?" Kirsty asked, somewhat incredulously.

"It figures," Leroy said, stepping out of the shadows behind this friend. He eyed her hand, still in her pocket – the same cautious, wary glance from their first encounter at Coney Island, almost two weeks before. He took a step closer to the oblivious Lude, hovering nearby in what was definitely a defensive, almost protective fashion. She removed her hand slowly from the pocket, and saw Leroy visibly relax a tad. "So, what brings you out this late?" Again, echoing her words from their first, abortive meeting. He eyed the shoebox questioningly.

"I'm just getting rid of some stuff down at the river," she said, after a moment's internal deliberation.

"What's in there? Photographs?" Lude asked, moving closer to Kirsty in order to get a better look.

"Stuff," she answered cryptically, taking a step back from the inquisitive creature – Nightbrood? _What is the singular form of 'Nightbreed' anyway?_ she wondered.

"It sounds heavy. Can I see?" Lude persisted. Kirsty drew back even further, her mind picturing against her will the image of the childlike Lude in possession of the seemingly-innocent puzzle box, and what it would do to him.

Finally, Leroy intervened:

"Lude, if the lady wants to give whatever it is a Viking funeral, it's her business," he advised.

"Well, can we at least watch her throw it in?" Lude asked.

...which was how the three of them wound up down by the pier, with Kirsty throwing the box containing _the_ Box into the murky water. It hit with a splash, bobbed for a moment,and then was gone from sight.

 _I give it two hours, tops,_ Kirsty thought grimly as she watched it sink. Leroy and Lude hummed a short, comic dirge together, eliciting a surprised snicker from Kirsty.

"Well, that's that," Leroy said. "What now?" Kirsty silently echoed his sentiment – she'd briefly considered bolting back to her apartment, but anything was better than just waiting for the Box to resurface.

"Jagged has _Guitar Hero_ over at his place," Lude said hopefully.

"You know," Kirsty said, "that actually sounds like a plan."

She darted a nervous glance back at the water as she and her new friends (and how had _that_ happened, exactly?) turned to leave.

....

Kirsty, Lude, and Leroy were crossing the threshold into Chaos less than half an hour later. The same sense of disorientation washed over her as she stepped out from the dark corridor and into the psychedelic nightclub lights. Lude made a beeline for the arcade area, with Leroy in tow. Kirsty followed them, more to be around people with whom she felt halfway comfortable than anything else. After about five minutes of watching Lude work his way through Danzig's _Mother,_ she turned her attention out to the dance floor.

Kirsty recalled what Peloquin had said about the place being like an "acid trip." She could feel the lights, and the pulse of the music as they began to work on her; could feel her shoulders relaxing almost against her will, the tension in her chest unknotting. It would have easy just to let her mind sink into their sequence, and stare off into space. It would've been easier to lose herself in the bodies thronging on the dance floor below the arcade. She willed herself to do neither.

Kirsty had never been one for expanding her mental state. It was the same trouble that she'd always had falling asleep when she was a child. Something about the idea of surrendering her awareness, her cognizance, to some other force had always seemed repellent to her. She'd never had any problem with liquor, and there had only been a few times in her life when she'd allowed herself to become truly falling-down insensibly drunk (the housewarming party on Lodovico Street being one.) She'd always steered clear of the harder chemicals.

However, her experiences had taught her that there were those in the world for whom the infliction and the reception of pain was the equivalent of popping peyote buttons, or smoking a joint; a gateway from one mental state to another. What was it about the human race, she wondered, that led its constituents to seek such experiences? What was it about the Cenobites that had led them to their willfully mutilated state? She remembered the picture of _him_ , as a human; the stalwart soldier of some bygone era. What had happened to influence him to seek the Box, if in fact he had sought it out? Had he opened it in ignorance, like she had?

She could imagine how her Uncle Frank had found it; she hadn't known much about the family drama during her sheltered youth, but she'd been able to piece much of it together after the fact. There was no altered state that Frank would have turned down; no experience that he'd shied away from in his mis-spent life as an addict and drifter. None, perhaps, except for the pleasures offered by the Cenobites; he'd made his escape from them at the first opportunity, hadn't he?

She remembered though, oh, how she remembered...Frank in her father's skin, hanging from a hundred hooks. The look he'd thrown her, right before they took him apart.

_("Jesus wept...")_

She shuddered. Was there something within herself that craved the same extremes? Was that why _he_ kept finding her?

She spotted Jagged as she continued to ponder these issues. He was dancing off by himself on one of the raised walkways off from the main dancefloor. There was something ecstatic, even triumphant about the way that he moved; not like a swagger, exactly. He put her more in mind of a preacher in the act of delivering a particularly transcendent and uplifting sermon. But that wasn't all; as she watched, her mind began to perceive certain patterns in the flow of his dance. There was something familiar about it, something that raised the hairs on the back of her neck; almost as if there were a code that she could just barely make out expressed in the wake of his passage on the catwalk. The mirrored walls around him echoed every move he made, until Kirsty wasn't sure which image was actually him, and which were his reflections.

She blinked, and reminded herself that this could all probably be chalked up to the fact that she hadn't slept in nearly two days. She looked around, and realized that she'd moved from where Lude and Leroy were standing; that in fact, she'd been subconsciously pacing beneath him as her eyes followed him on the catwalk above. She ground her teeth at the lapse. Had she no self-control left at all?

She really, really needed to sleep.

Crossing her arms, she leaned back against the mirrored wall. So easy, just to shut her eyes against the noise and lights...

_("Kirsty...")_

_He_ was there. The Hellpriest.

He was there behind the mirror, just as he was back at her apartment. _Waiting._

Waiting to take her soul.

"Kirsty?" A voice sounded in front of her. She opened her eyes, startled to sudden wakefulness. Mary Red stood in front of her, a concerned look on her face. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," she said, a little sharply. She was more annoyed with herself than anything. If dozing off in a loud nightclub wasn't the capper on everything, she didn't know what was.

"Do you need a place to stay for the night? Our place is somewhat crowded, but it's not far from here."

"I wouldn't want to impose," Kirsty answered, a little more politely, though her tone was still guarded. _I still have no idea who these people are. Some kind of cult? Didn't Peloquin say something about Mary_ _"proselytizing?"_

"Oh, it's no problem. We have people coming and going all the time. Many of us have seen you around in the past few weeks. It would be a chance to get to know some of your fellow travellers of the night," Mary said with a warm smile.

Ordinarily, Kirsty wouldn't have thought twice about rejecting Mary Red's offer. But there was something about this night, something that had come of her inability to maintain a hold on herself and her mental state, that prompted something within her to say, _'fuck it.'_

_I've killed five people. How much danger can I possibly be in right now?_

_(..Don't think for a moment that you're not in danger -)_

"What the Hell?" Kirsty responded.

"That's the spirit," Mary agreed.

She stepped over to Leroy and Lude before they left.

"Listen, I'm going to take off. You guys have fun," Kirsty said.

Still engrossed in the game, Lude barely seemed to notice; but Leroy caught Kirsty's sleeve as she turned to depart.

"Be careful," he mouthed the words, his eyes darting over to Mary. Kirsty nodded, and answered with what she hoped was a reassuring  smile.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Leroy remarked to his companion as she walked away.

….

"Kirsty left the club with Mary? Are you sure?" Jagged asked, the worry clear on his bespectacled face.

"She took off about an hour ago."

"Shit," Jagged exclaimed, running a fitful hand through his hair, almost pulling it from nervousness.

"Is this going to be a problem?" asked one of the room's other occupants. They currently stood in Jagged's upstairs loft; four men, only one of them technically still human, still living. The speaker was rather ordinary-looking, if handsome - but Jagged himself had never put much stock in appearances.

"It might be, Cabal," Jagged answered. "Mary believes that Kirsty may still have the Box."

"Kirsty got rid of a box before we came to the club," Leroy interjected. "We watched her throw it in the river." 

"She dumped it? Are you sure?" Jagged asked.

"You think it might have been _the_ box?" Cabal asked.

"It looked like a shoe box, but we didn't see what was inside." Leroy said. They all considered this for a moment in silence.

"It could be anywhere now. It could even find its way to Mary on its own," Jagged said.

"Theoretically, what Mary wants to do isn't impossible. I should know," said the other man; a tall, muscular biker-type with zigzags shaved into his hairstyle that were nearly twenty years out of date. "Thing is, we had the help of a goddess. And even if she is still around in one form or another, she isn't really in a position to bail us out anymore. And the Labyrinth is _tricky_. It plays games with your mind; that's its whole point. I can tell you about all the souls I've helped save. I can tell you what we were up against, every single time. But for the life of me, I can't remember exactly how we _got_ to any of them. That's what it's like."

"Quite a few of Hell's tricks are known to me as well, Ron," Jagged answered. "Winter didn't even have the patience to listen to my meager teachings before he went charging off to Romania – and now his cousin and her flock will share the same fate here, if something isn't done to stop them."

"Look, Jagged -" Cabal said, "I know it sucks, and I know it may not be what you want to hear. But have you ever thought about just letting them go at this point? They're not going to stop."

"I can't," Jagged said. "This is just something that I have to do."

 _I said I wouldn't stop them if Kirsty went to the Deaders of her own free will....but fuck me, it's happening again,_ Jagged thought.

_...._

Fifteen years in New York, and Jagged was still mostly a mystery to many who had befriended him. All he'd ever told anyone was that he'd escaped from the Labyrinth. That, and the fact that his sister was lost to him, and had been initiated into the Order of the Gash.

This wasn't exactly the _whole_ truth, but it was close enough; it had served him well enough so far.

Winter had first come to him, ironically enough, on a hot July night in 1998. Jagged's master had been gone from the Helter Incendio for nearly two decades, and he'd been between lovers at the time. He'd ascertained Winter's true nature quickly enough. They fell to discussing esoterica over Pernod, and Jagged suggested they re-enact the bridge scene from the film _The Lost Boys._ That was all it took.

Even then, Winter had possessed a cryptic charm, a flair for the dramatic, and a defiant streak that Jagged had found irresistible. His heart had been ensnared from the word "go."

And for a while, everything had been perfect.

The newcomers trickled in slowly after he and Winter set up housekeeping in the loft space above the abandoned warehouse where Chaos now stood. Marla, Joey and the others had all seemed summoned to the spot from whatever respective corners of the globe they hailed from by some external call. It was the first time since old Warwick had left through the Neirica (in search of word of the vanished Shoal - a one-man rescue-mission that was already doomed to failure before he even got started) that Jagged had known anything like family.

He still came across things of theirs from time to time. That photograph of himself and Winter that Marla had taken with one of her many cameras had been lying in wait under the cushions of the sofa for who knew how long; finding it months after the fact had left him inconsolable for the rest of the day.

There'd been the time when he and Joey had gone out to a rave dressed in body paint, Polynesian wrap skirts, neon glow necklaces and armbands, and little else. The police had chosen to crash that particular party that night, spurred on by the inevitable drug bust that was sure to follow. Jagged had faced the boys in blue and pumped his fist in the air, shouting, _"Fuck the Gash,"_ as loudly as he could. Joey had followed suit, ignorant of the true meaning of Jagged's words. ( _"Hell yeah, man. Fuck the Gash!"_ ) Behind them, all the ravers were quick in joining in.

It had been their finest moment. In some circles, Jagged was still known as, "Fuck The Gash Man."

Almost three years to the day. Jagged found himself crying for an hour over Joey's abandoned copy of The KLF's _The White Room_ that he'd discovered behind his CD shelf during a bout of cleaning.

Looking back, they'd all seemed so _happy_ together. Years had passed, and he often found himself asking " _why_." Why hadn't it been enough for them? Why hadn't _he_ been enough for Winter? In all of the centuries of his existence, he'd never remembered feeling so content. He'd assumed they were all as happy with the arrangement as he was.

It was only when he'd steeled himself enough to look back over more of the remaining photographs in his possession that he'd noticed a wasted, desperate look on the faces of the members of his makeshift family that he'd never detected when they'd all been together with him in his house. Of course back then, it had belonged to all of them.

It was the Box, Jagged reasoned. Winter could say whatever he wanted about 'laying low the ramparts' and throwing down the old Order. In the end it was all just the fucking Box, drawing them all in.

Even then, he'd been able to see that Winter was digging deep into his resources - but Jagged had given of himself freely. He hadn't used much of the inheritance left to him by his former master. Even though half of it had gone to Warwick's two great-grandsons (one who was said to be a successful businessman and family man, the other a junkie, drifter, and total reprobate – neither of whom Jagged had ever met) there had still been more than enough of it to go around. And it wasn't like the Deaders ate very much, anyway...

The thought that Winter had sought him out for that reason - that he had in fact intended to use him the whole time - was an unbearably recurrent theory in Jagged's mind.

 _Damn it, why must so many of the undead and artificially-immortal people in the world constantly seek after more energy, more power?_ Jagged wondered. _Where are the ones who are content to simply **be**?_

The answer, of course, had been dwelling beneath Central Park the whole time. But Jagged had no dealings with the Tribes of the Moon until after Winter and the others were gone. Still smarting from the pain of Winter's abandonment, he'd been more cautious with them at first. Friendly, but guarded. The bespectacled geek in the loft over the empty warehouse who could offer a bit of helpful advice on occult matters every now and then, but who generally kept to himself. It wasn't until later, when Boone – Cabal – had suggested a use for all of that open space beneath him, that he'd really come into his own. Chaos, which had started as a bi-monthly rave, had ended up becoming so much more.

He remembered the night before they all left, when Winter had approached him.

" _I know what you are,"_ he said. _"I know what you're hiding from."_

" _Oh...really?"_ Jagged had answered. He wondered how much Winter actually knew. _Awkward!_

" _Look, Winter, -"_

" _You won't need to hide anymore, when I take what's rightfully mine. Help me do this, and you shall have all of your power returned to you, and your sister besides."_

Jagged had opened his mouth to respond – and for a moment, he'd seen outside himself. He'd had an inkling of what would happen if Winter actually succeeded. There had been a time when he'd wanted nothing more than to do exactly as his lover was suggesting. ( _Hell yeah, fuck the Gash!_ ) But now – all he felt was the Box's pull, and Winter's lust to possess it.

" _I've lived this way for too long, Winter,"_ Jagged told him finally, after a long pause. _"I don't want anything more than what we have here, right now."_

The next night, Winter and his flock were gone. The day he learned of the explosion in Bucharest was still counted as the worst day of his life.

Mary had turned up a few years later. The first cousin of John Merchant, who'd mysteriously come down with a bad case of decapitation in the very building he'd designed. Jagged could feel the same cycle beginning to assert itself, as Mary and her ever-increasing crowd of supplicants were drawn in. This time, he'd been ready. He flat refused to have anything to do with Winter's original purpose, even as he offered sanctuary to Mary and her flock. He figured he owed them that much, at least.

The difference was, Mary soon turned out to be _useful._ In the beginning, she'd begged Winter for his gift, and had been found wanting. He'd called her "unworthy." No matter - the Box's call had turned out to be stronger than Winter's denial. She'd learned things. By the time she'd arrived in New York, she'd had more Suits up her nonexistent sleeves than most of the would-be sorcerers of her age that Jagged had seen. It seemed that she was something of an occult prodigy.

Winter had been good _._ Mary was _better_ , and she was more inclined to give her aid to those who needed it, and to face down the members of New York's supernatural community who made nuisances of themselves. Jagged had found himself wondering if perhaps Winter had refused her out of jealousy, if he'd feared being upstaged by his young cousin.

The problem was, she didn't see this. Winter was still her end-all and be-all, the focus of her obsession. In her mind, the Deaders would never be successful without him at the helm; she was merely an acolyte, a gifted amateur. Winter's charisma had infected her as thoroughly as it had Jagged, and she believed his rejection had really been a call for her to go out and _prove herself -_ which she would finally manage to do by bringing him back. Or so she thought.

Which brought them back to Kirsty.

After Cabal, Ron Ringwood, Lude and Leroy left, Jagged gave a great deal of thought to The Matter Of Kirsty. A plan was being formulated, but it occurred to him that he'd need assistance, and soon.

He picked up the phone, and hit speed-dial.

"Harry? It's Jagged. I'm afraid I have a favor to ask of you -"


End file.
